The last few days have been rough. So we shelved our original in-depth article commemorating Litecoin’s 14th birthday.
In its place, a lite-hearted listicle. Yes, the cheapest of all content formats and one we promise to never use again.
Without further delay (or shame) here’s 10 things you didn’t know about Litecoin.
Visionary Message
Did you know that a message lives inside Litecoin’s genesis block?
“NY Times 05/Oct/2011: Steve Jobs, Apple’s Visionary, Dies at 56”
Steve Jobs' memory will be part of Litecoin - literally and figuratively - forever. And while Charlie is a Mac user, sentiment wasn’t the motive. Embedding that headline - timestamped from the day before Litecoin’s genesis block - was deliberate. It served as cryptographic proof that Litecoin couldn’t have been pre-mined. A verifiable marker in time.
Bonus Quote. Charlie Lee, aka 'coblee', responding candidly to a question re: Windows binaries a few days before Litecoin's launch (source: bitcointalk):
Building litecoind on Windows is a pain in the ass. I haven't used Windows in about 8 years.
Seeking Coinbase Support, From 'Support'
In May 2013, Charlie Lee wrote to Coinbase's generic 'Support' email to see if they’d "be interested in supporting Litecoin”. Coinbase’s first employee Olaf Carlson-Wee - who left in 2016 to start Polychain Capital and stop replying to my emails - responded 48 hours later asking Charlie for his phone number. It must have seemed like Coinbase were taking their new partnership with OkCupid a bit too seriously - nevertheless, Charlie obliged and passed along his digits.
Turns out Olaf wanted to make Charlie an offer he couldn’t refuse: leave Google to come work for Coinbase (with a 50% pay cut to-boot!). Ever-committed to Litecoin’s growth, Charlie took the job thinking it’d give him plenty of time to convince Coinbase to list Litecoin.
NB: Coinbase had only been around for 12 months, but Charlie's support request was #14805. That's 40+ cases a day - poor Olaf must've been run off his feet!
The Coinbase Listing
Four weeks later, Coinbase announced its newest hire via company blog: Welcome Charlie Lee (creator of Litecoin) to the team!. For the next three years, Charlie spent every waking hour campaigning Coinbase’s overlords. Eventually, they relented. Charlie had convinced Coinbase to list… Ethereum! (You’re welcome, Vitalik).
This only served as more motivation for Charlie. And, by early 2017, his Litecoin listing vision had came to fruition - nearly four years after it began. Mission accomplished, ‘SatoshiLite’ handed in his lanyard and moved on to other things.
Satoshi Was An Early Litecoin Contributor…?
Not even Peter Todd thought Peter Todd was Satoshi. Nice try, HBO.
But what Peter Todd did think was that “as usual, Litecoin is the cheaper, faster option”. Bitcoin maximalists were beside themselves, as few realized Todd also audited Litecoin’s code in 2013. A rare instance of a Bitcoin Core dev publicly endorsing Litecoin. In spite of the younger sibling testing the SegWit and Lightning waters first to make sure it was safe to go in.
If you’d like to read more about the symbiotic relationship between Bitcoin and Litecoin, here’s our deep-dive.
And let's not forget another of Litecoin’s early contributors, Warren Togami. Who always appreciates recognition of his Litecoin work - so please show Warren love on Twitter / X: https://x.com/wtogami!
$1 Million Segwit Bounty
The scaling debate - aka Blocksize Wars - had plagued Bitcoin for years. But there was one way to settle the feud without getting any Core devs tied up in knots. In January 2017, Charlie Lee laid it all out in a Medium post. Even though Litecoin was not suffering from ‘block size’ issues, it would activate SegWit first. And, a few months later, Litecoin quietly implemented SegWit.
Success! Right? Surely Litecoin's precedent would be sufficient proof to silence the naysayers?
Alas, Bitcoin’s broken record continued to play.
Clearly fed up, an anonymous Reddit user posted a $1 million bounty to debunk a major SegWit myth. Who knows if the bounty was the final straw, or if the 'big blockers' just got puffed out, but a few months later Bitcoin followed in Litecoin’s footsteps and activated SegWit. One thing we do know for sure is the identity of the anonymous bounty poster. Thank you, 'anon'.
Year of Litecoin, The Pioneer
SegWit's activation wasn't the only milestone Litecoin achieved before Bitcoin. In 2017 alone, Litecoin notched up two additional major firsts.
Even though Lightning Network was primarily proposed as a scaling solution for Bitcoin, its first transaction was completed through Litecoin.
On May 11, 2017 - at block height 1201581 - 0.00000001 LTC was sent from Zürich to San Francisco in under one second. You can watch below, as the payment is sent by Christian Decker, live on YouTube.
This transaction was a major achievement for Lightning Labs in taking the technology from theory to real-world execution, and real-time demonstration.
In the same month, Lightning Network also conducted the first ever Atomic Swap! And, once again, What Bitcoin Did, Litecoin did first.
Bonus fact: Lightning Labs received investment from two Bitcoin legends. Twitter's founder, Jack*, and Litecoin's very own, Charlie Lee.
*Hey Jack, if you're reading this from your time machine, please don't sell out to Elon. Thank you in advance from the past, Robbie.
Creator's Identity, Verified
In 2016 every man and their Doge were claiming to be Satoshi.
One such person - who we’ll call 'Braig Sneezin Bright' to avoid libel - was defiant that he was Bitcoin’s creator. Huge if true… but, actually, pretty easy to prove… if true. Using cryptography, 'Braig Sneezin Bright' could provide all the proof he needed. Just as another person - let’s call them Barlie See - demonstrated.
Harry Potter Secrets
Many will know that Litecoin activated MWEB back in 2022. And adoption of the opt-in privacy feature has grown steadily since - with a balance of 190k Litecoin as at time of birthday-ing. Fewer will know that 'MWEB' stands for 'MimbleWimble Extension Blocks'. With the ‘MimbleWimble’ part named after a spell in Harry Potter.
Now, can I get a show of hands for those that know the pseudonym of the ‘MimbleWimble’ protocol creator?
Sorry! The answer we were looking for was 'who is Tom Elvis Jedusor'. Which, according to my source (Google), is Voldemort’s name in French.
Want to know something even spookier? Tom Elvis Jedusor published MimbleWimble’s whitepaper to the #bitcoin-wizards IRC back in July 2016. Talk about layers!
Which Chikun Came First?
Before Lester, Litecoin’s most famous meme was 'Chikun'.
Exactly how 'Chikun' hatched, the Internet isn’t clear. One theory: after a message board user insulted Litecoin by calling it ‘chicken feed’, the community decided to wear the ‘insult’ as a badge of honor. Referring to Litecoin as ‘Chikun’ from then on. And, apparently, every time the price of LTC went up, the ‘Arise Chikun Arise’ cry - co-opted from TV show Aqua Teen Hunger Force - would flood message boards and exchange chats.
Personally, this writer thinks Charlie Lee played Final Fantasy, dug the chocobo character, someone found out, and the chikun flew the coop.
Maybe we’ll never truly know. But if you do know the real truth-behind-the-Chikun, please send us an email.
14 Years, 100% Uptime
If you are reading this, Litecoin is now 14 years old. And has 100% uptime. (quick math) Making Litecoin the first cryptocurrency in history to have 14 years of consecutive, uninterrupted network activity!
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Did you know all 10 things? Congrats! Your bounty awaits - click to get your reward!
This article went live at 0300 GMT 13 October 2025 - exactly 14 years since Litecoin's launch.
For more fun Litecoin facts follow Litecoin History or Robbie Coleman on X / Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
